


Colors

by Yami_Kada7



Series: Link Up [9]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Bad coping mechanisms, Day 9, Family, It Gets Better, VRAINS Week 2018, kusanagi is a worried parent, slight angst, yusaku probably needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 00:09:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15351855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yami_Kada7/pseuds/Yami_Kada7
Summary: Kusanagi decides to stop by Yusaku’s apartment to make sure that he is taking care of things alright by himself. What he finds worries him.





	Colors

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the delay, I was extremely busy for a few days so I'm still catching up on the prompts!
> 
> So, I was watching a documentary for school a while ago, and the idea for this came to me. In the documentary, it was mentioned that in some cases, when a child was abused or malnourished when young, that they will sometimes develop a habit of hoarding food, mostly liquids. I thought, given Yusaku's circumstances, that this could be something he might do. Please let me know if I portrayed this correctly, I'm honestly writing blind here.

“Really, you don’t have to, Kusanagi-san.” Yusaku insisted for the upteenth time.

Kusanagi flashed him a smile, “Actually, I do, so let’s get going. I haven’t stopped by your place since I helped you move in, so this is the perfect opportunity to see what you’ve done with the place.”

Yusaku sighed, shifting his bag of groceries as he searched through his school bag for his keys. He found them as they reached the base of the stairs, then jogged up the flight, clearly trying to lose him with the pace.

Kusanagi walked up, keeping fairly close to the other, close enough to catch the door before it could close all the way in front of him, at least. He shouldered his way in, taking off his shoes before approaching the kitchen, where the rustle of paper bags alerts him to Yusaku’s presence.

The front hallway is bland, somehow emptier than move-in day before the boxes had been brought up. There is nothing on the walls, or any furniture to be seen. Kusanagi has a distinct idea of why Yusaku did not want him to come here.

He turns to the left into the kitchen. The bags Yusaku was carrying rest on a battered circular table, a pair of chairs pushed in on opposite sides. One was perfectly straight, while the other was crooked with one corner sticking out into the rest of the gray room. It weighs him down that their wooden whorls are the most colorful things he has seen since stepping through the doors.

Yusaku is bustling around, taking the last few items from his bag already, and Kusanagi sets his own two bags onto the tabletop. He helps put away the food for a while, occasionally breaking the silence to ask where certain items went. Yusaku had plenty of healthy foods stocked, probably from the lecture last week about eating right, but he was shocked by the amount of snacks.

Granola bars and trail mixes and other easy, quick foods stared at him out of one cabinet, and a cursory glance at the expiration dates told him that the packages were not old at all. He hadn’t expected Yusaku to be the type of person who snuck food between meals.

Yusaku seemed to notice his attention on the cabinet, and shut it with just enough noise to tell Kusanagi that he was embarrassed.

He tried to put it out of his mind as they finished unloading the bags, the brown paper being folded and tucked away neatly for future use. A glass of water was placed before him, along with apologies for not having any tea stocked up.

That was all right, he didn’t like tea very much.

Yusaku sat in the crooked chair, leaving Kusanagi to pull out the other with a scrape, and drop down to sit across from him. They talked about small things, just wanting to fill the silence that lurked in the doorway, approaching from the rest of the apartment’s confines.

During a small stretch between topics, Kusanagi glanced over to the counter, only for his eyes to be pulled up short once more. Clear, reusable plastic water bottles were arranged next to the sink, waiting in line for their turn to be washed.

He had never seen Yusaku use a water bottle, not once in all the time he’d known him. And suddenly there were six different bottles all in one place? The darkness crept in closer from the doorway.

“I didn’t realize that you used so many water bottles, Yusaku.” He kept his tone light, curiosity at a minimum. 

Yusaku blinked at him, before his eyes moved rapid fire to the bottles, to him, to the cabinet from before, back to him. “I don’t use that many, but I keep forgetting to wash them out, so it just looks like I use a lot of them.” Yusaku’s eyes slid away from his, focusing on the way his fingers were holding his own glass of water.

If Yusaku was bothering to hide something from him, then he had to figure it out. He painted on a smile. “Well, you should probably wash them out tonight, while you have the time.” He heaved himself out of his chair. “I’ll look around, I know that I sometimes leave cups and things like that around.”

He left the room before Yusaku could respond, headed farther down the bleak hallway. The room across from the kitchen was a guest room that Yusaku had probably never opened the door to, so he skipped it.

The room to the left of the kitchen was the bathroom, and upon opening the door, he found a water bottle on the counter. He grabbed it, pushing away the image of the bare, concrete walls of the bathroom as he headed further down the hallway. The next door, on his right, was Yusaku’s room, but he walked past it to head down the stairs into the living room.

There was a water bottle on his desk next to his computer, one on the badly chipped coffee table in front of the threadbare couch, and another on the side table where his duel disk was turned off and sitting inside it’s cabinet.

He gave the room another once-over, then headed back up the stairs. The door to Yusaku’s room was shut, no lights on beyond it to hint at what might be found inside. He grabbed the handle, shoving it open quickly before his legs could decide to skip this room.

There were three water bottles on his bedside table, and when he turned to leave the room, he found another few on the bookshelf. To call the amount overflowing in his arms unsettling didn’t cut it. Most of them were halfway full or more, and he couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing.

He carried the load back to the kitchen, where Yusaku was working on the second to last bottle. He set the ten that he was carrying down onto the table one at a time, their  _ plunk _ as they hit the stone surface as steady as a metronome. Once they were all down, he moved around Yusaku to pick up the towel and dry them off.

“Kusanagi-san, you’re my guest, you don’t have to help out.” Yusaku didn’t look up from the bottle he was working on.

Kusanagi reached over, ruffling his hair. “I know, but I want to help you out, Yusaku. I worry, you know.” He wanted to shake some sense into the boy, but he knew that that would have the opposite effect. So he returned to drying the water bottles.

They were done in no time, and when Yusaku reached up to the cabinet to put them away, Kusanagi spotted even more clear plastic water bottles. Enough was enough.

He grabbed one of the paper bags that had been set to the side, and with a sweep of his arm, shoveled the sixteen water bottles on the counter into it. Yusaku turned around to stare at him.

“Alright,” He began. “You have so many of these things, there is no way that you can keep track of them all. I’ll be confiscating these, and” Kusanagi plucked a few more from the cabinet, “these as well. If you leave them sitting around half-empty, they’re going to gather bacteria.” He faced Yusaku, making sure that his words got across.

Yusaku, through his speech, had blinked in confusion, to his fists tightening in panic, to his shoulders lowering in defeat. He nodded, his head coming up and down like a robot. “Understood, Kusanagi-san. I will try to keep better track of them.” 

The rest of the night had been full of half-conversations, silence, and glances stolen at the paper bag sitting by the door.

* * *

Walking through the grocery store alone nearly a week later, Kusanagi wondered how Yusaku was doing. They hadn’t talked as much the past week, him spending most of it away visiting Jin. He was doing much better these past two months, recognizing more words, having expressions, and going outside on a regular basis.

Yusaku, on the other hand, was worrying him more. At first, he had seemed lighter after Hanoi was gone, but now he had long stretches of silent staring into nothing, and he was more prone to distraction. He had taken to giving Yusaku small tasks to keep him busy, and Yusaku tackled each of them with the single-mindedness that he had once reserved for the Knights.

He was brought out of his thoughts by a flash of color on a nearby shelf. As his eyes focused on the jumbled assortment, he felt a smile tug at his lips. Maybe there was another way to cheer him up.

* * *

The next day, at the crack of dawn, he was rapping on Yusaku’s door. He tried to keep everything in his arms from falling down, which was easier said than done. 

Just as he was considering knocking again, the door opened a crack and Yusaku, still in his pajamas, peered out at him. Upon seeing Kusanagi, the door opened more fully, and Yusaku glanced between him and the bags in his arms before stepping aside for him to enter.

Kusanagi made his way to the kitchen, reaching the table just as one of the bags decided to escape from him. The large tarp inside of it slapped down, and Yusaku immediately picked it up. He turned it over in his hands, sleep making him lag in his assessments of the item.

He brought out the contents of one of the other bags, setting each one down on the table with a steady  _ plunk _ . Yusaku blinked down at them, before his eyes shot open fully and his head snapped back to Kusanagi’s face. 

“How are you, Yusaku? Sorry for the early wake up call, but this is going to take all day, so I thought that we should get started as soon as possible.” He gestured at the rainbow of water bottles on the table. “First off, these are to help you keep track of your bottles; all the ones you had were clear, and just blend in with the walls, but these are bright enough to stand out, hopefully.” He tapped the only one that swirled with every color. “Save this one until the end of the week, so that you’ll remember to wash them all at least that often. There’s one for each day, just refill them if you want more water, don’t grab a new one from the cabinet.”

He had to keep talking, or else Yusaku would interrupt. “Now, there should be no issue of misplacing them, right?” He crossed his arms with one eyebrow raised. Yusaku nodded, glancing from the seven bottles to his face.

He clapped his hands. “Alright! Now, for the next step of today” He unpacked the tarps he had brought, and all of the color swatches. “This whole apartment is just plain concrete walls, I want you to choose at least one color for each room and the hallway, take your time, but we’re going to buy the paint before lunch. Are we clear?”

Yusaku nodded, and Kusanagi didn’t miss the small hint of a smile that he tried to hide. “We’re clear, Kusanagi-san. I’ll go get dressed first, if that’s okay?” He picked up a few swatches anyways.

Kusanagi chuckled, ruffling the boy’s hair. “Of course! I’ll make some breakfast while you get ready, so get going.” Yusaku batted his hand away, and nodded once before leaving the room.

Kusanagi took a second to open up the cabinet with the water bottles. By the time Yusaku reentered the kitchen, he was well on his way to making some eggs, and the rest of the clear plastic bottles were stuffed in a bag by the door.

Lining the cabinet with their bright gleam sat seven water bottles in all the colors of the rainbow.

**Author's Note:**

> Just to clarify: this takes place between seasons 1 and 2 and is partially based on my headcanon that Kusanagi is Yusaku's guardian, which hopefully explains why he felt like he had to check up on Yusaku in the first place.
> 
> Thank you for reading this all the way through, please let me know what you thought!


End file.
